Autocorrect Fail Results In School Lockdown

Autocorrect has been behind more than its share of misunderstandings, but today it stirred up a whole heap of trouble, even by its sketchy standards. Some poor university student’s phone corrected “gonna go” to “gunman” and got a school put into lockdown by the police.

At West Hall High and Hiddle schools in Gainesville, Georgia, the student in question — one who attends anothe school — texted “Gonna go to West Hall this afternoon” to a student attending West Hall. Thing is, autocorrect pooped out “Gunman go to West Hall this afternoon.” Much different. The student alerted the authorities, who reacted with a full lockdown for the schools — probably due to the recent Ohio school shootings.

Now, you can definitely make the case for some context to go into reading random text messages that appear to alert you to imminent violence. And it’s probably the right case. And there’s also the sad reality that violence is such a real concern that silly texts like this have to be taken seriously. But isn’t it more fun to giggle about autocorrect’s perpetual ineptitude throwing an entire school system into disarray? I say yes. Lol autocorrect. [Gainesville Times via Twitter]

That's some epic autocorrect fail there. Imagine being the person who sent it trying to explain to the cops that your phone just messed up your text! I'm sure they weren't just like "Oh that's cool then"